Griffith all but certain to stay Labor

Labor candidate Terri Butler is all but assured of claiming Kevin Rudd's former Queensland seat of Griffith but LNP candidate Bill Glasson will wait until about 10,000 postal votes have been counted before formally conceding.

And both sides of federal politics have claimed vindication from the result, with Prime Minister Tony Abbott saying it was a repudiation of Labor's negative campaign and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten saying it showed voters opposed the Coalition's planned cuts. Dr Glasson won about 47.7 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote to Ms Butler's 52.3 per cent in the poll, almost a 1 percentage point improvement on the result in his contest with Mr Rudd last September. About 70,000 votes have been counted so far, with 10,000 postal votes yet to be counted.

But Mr Abbott said the result was just the fourth time in 114 years a federal government had had a swing to it in a by-election.

''There is still quite a bit of the vote to count, let's see where things end up, but as things stand this was a very good result for Bill Glasson, a very ordinary result for Bill Shorten,'' he said on Sunday.

Dr Glasson admitted on Sunday it would be very difficult for him to get over the line but said he ''won't concede until those votes are counted tomorrow''.

Mr Shorten said the by-election had been fought by Labor on national issues, including what he said were planned health and education cuts by the Abbott government. ''[They were] desperate to turn it into a council by-election,'' he said.